


Pre-Job Questions

by ilyena_sylph, Katarik



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, parker asking questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 22:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3267113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're headed out into the Great Plains, and Parker is curious about something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pre-Job Questions

He should've been braced for a question like the one Parker asked as they drove northeast out of Billings. Really, he should've. But then again, there was no bracing for Parker. The rugged country rolled out away from them on both sides, just him and Parker in the truck they'd leased back in town. The others were coming in different ways, but this was the easiest for his role, and Parker had wanted to come along.

“Eliot?" she asked, drawing his attention.

"Yeah, Parker?" 

"What’s a cow like? When it’s not on my plate, I mean. Can they be petted? The horses wound up not being as homicidal as I thought. Are cows more murderous?”

Fuck.

The answer to that was 'yes', of course it was, but he couldn't say that to _Parker_. She'd blow the con because she was terrified of the cows. Great. So how the hell did he pull this off? 

"Most cows," he said, as he felt her staring at his profile, "don't much care one way or the other about people. We do our thing, they do theirs, doesn't much matter to 'em. As to what they're like, well, that sorta depends on what kind of cow it is. A be --" 

"What _kind_ of cow?" she was staring at him again. "Why are there different kinds of cows?" 

"Meat and milk, mostly. See, a dairy -- " 

She snorted, and he knew that noise for disbelief before she got words out. Sure enough, she asked, "What? Different kinds of cows for beef and for milk? You're kidding, right?" 

He turned to look at her, and she blinked in surprise a few times, confusion in the line between her brows and her eyes. "You're... not kidding?" 

"No, I'm not kidding. Why would I?" he cocked his head at her. 

"It sounds silly. But, okay. Different cows for meat and for milk. You were going to tell me about them?" 

"Yeah. Alright. So. Dairy cattle, they're bred and raised to be calm, placid, and to give a _lot_ \-- I mean, a _lot_ of milk. Dozens of times more milk than a normal beef cow. Select for the biggest producers, breed those, cull the others... you do it enough, you get cows that look kinda like they have a fencepost for a spine and hips sharp enough to cut you, but they make milk at like.... fifty, fifty-five pounds a day. On average."

Parker blinked once, twice, cocked her head. "That's a lot of milk. I think I need a bigger bowl of cereal."

He couldn't help but laugh at that for a second. "Lot bigger bowl of cereal. But yeah. That's the dairy cow side of things. Nice and calm, come in to be milked twice a day, get petted sometimes, vet checks, go eat, poop, huddle up in the barns at night. Lots of 'em have names, make friends with their ranchers, all that. A dairy bull can be a little... temperamental, but really, they're pretty nice critters." 

“But you said there were two kinds.” Parker frowned at him. “Are these the murderous kinds? The ones you’re not telling me about yet?”

"There's more like, six or eight kinds, and most of 'em still aren't murderous," he told her, considering the next bit of the answer. "Lots of beef cattle are pretty calm, too. But they roam around more, come in less, don't really interact with people much, except on pretty small spreads. 

"And then there's the breeds that have too much Spanish fighting cattle blood in 'em. Which anyone with half a brain stays the hell away from. Unless you're on a horse, then you've got a chance. I do not know what those lunatics in Pamplona have wrong with them, but it's serious." 

“Hardison says that about my skyscrapers,” she shrugged. “Are those the ones with all the horns?” Parker paused, jerked her head to staring at him dead-on, eyes narrowing so hard her nose scrunched up. “Eliot. Are we going to see cows with horns? Why are we going to see the horny cows?”

"Because our client owns a great plains ranch, Parker," he answered, trying not to crack up at the 'horny cows' comment. "And yes. Most of the cattle out here are gonna be longhorns, but -- " he lifted his hand, wrapping it around hers before she could jump some direction or another, " -- we're gonna keep fences between us and them, and not make them mad, so they keep doin' their cow thing while we do ours. You shouldn't have any reason to be out on open range with 'em.... hell, I just said that."

"Yep." Even Parker understood the concept of challenging the powers of worse.

"Sorry, sweetheart," he told her, and meant it. What was going to come of that, he had no damn idea, but it wasn't likely to be good. 

"They can't climb, right? Not like the goats?" 

Goats? Oh, the ones they'd seen on a commercial for that one nature show. "No, or at least, I've never seen a cow climb a tree. Or a windmill." 

"Okay." She nodded, as if that satisfied her, and it probably did, and looked out across the plains again, probably trying to figure out what to ask him next. 

Somehow, he had this vaguely sinking feeling that before the end of this job, he was gonna see a Parker re-creation of bull-leaping, or something new but equally wild. But she'd be okay.


End file.
